In casinos, patrons may use cash in the form of currency or coins to play games. Patrons may also use paper tickets to carry their money balances from one game to the next. Patrons obtain tickets from assisted-service counters or by depositing cash into self-service computer systems called Ticket-In-Ticket-Out (TITO) machines. When they are finished, patrons may redeem their ticket values to obtain cash from TITO machines. In the end, a large number of tickets are dispensed.
The drawbacks of using paper tickets are that patrons may very easily lose them, they can become destroyed or damaged, casinos incur cost from replenishing tickets, and casinos incur cost for maintaining ticket printers.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a ticketless system and method of managing casino patron money balances which minimizes use of paper tickets.